Early reviews

It's been great to get some encouraging feedback on my book.  The trade rags first and now today in the Globe and Mail.  One of my biggest fears has been that people would think that my book was a research monograph or a textbook.  It's not.  It's something I wanted to make as accessible as possible so that readers could see both how interesting the research on the biology of space and place is, but also to see how the nature of our engagement with space permeates so many interesting aspects of our daily lives.  There are risks involved in trying to do this, one of the biggest ones being that some people may have difficulty pinning down the book.  One early sign that this is happening is that in a few stores my book has been spotted in some pretty strange places -- the history section (!) for example.  But it seemed a risk worth taking.  The implications of what I'm trying to explain really do extend from interior design to urban planning and beyond.

A couple of points about today's review in the newspaper -- it's truly great to get the national exposure for my book but there are some corrections to be made.  I'm going to assume that if you're reading here you're interested enough in what I'm doing that you'll want the real deal.  First, I'm at the University of Waterloo and not the University of Western Ontario.  No idea how that gaffe could have happened.  Nothing wrong with UWO -- in fact I did my PhD there with a fantastic supervisor who continues to make huge contributions to Canadian science.  But if you look for me there, you're really lost.

Second, the person referred to in the review as Christopher Nold is actually Christian Nold.  To my mind, this is a more concerning error because Christian is doing incredible work and the reader who wanted to follow up might have some difficulty finding him without his proper name.  I can't tell you how many times I've mentioned him at meetings, in talks and a description of his biomapping project always elicits strong interest.  If you read my book, you'll see a few more details and opinions, but better yet would be to go take a look at his very comprehensive website.  I hope that someday we find a way to do something together.  We've exchanged a couple of emails but life is bouncing along very quickly for both of us.  It's quite a ride.